INUBO STATION (CHOSHI, CHIBA PREFECTURE)

Choshi railway goes crackers for senbei

Photos by Yomiuri Shimbun Photographer Sei Kohama

By Hajime Someya

Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writer

The Pacific Ocean a mere 200 meters away, a salty breeze blows along the platform as passengers wait for a train to arrive at Inubo Station in Choshi, Chiba Prefecture.

Running on a track stretching through fields, the Choshi Electric Railway Co. train blends in perfectly with the elegant, Portuguese-style station house painted in white, blue and gray.

Trains have been running along the single track line on the eastern coast of the Kanto region since 1923.

However, Choshi Dentetsu, or Choden as the company is known locally, has been operating in the red for years, in common with many locally based railway operators nationwide.

The company operates trains over a six-kilometer stretch that connects 10 stations in the city.

On average, Choden earns 120 million yen annually from fares, hardly enough to pay the salaries of its 24 employees.

Nine years ago, the staff at Inubo Station started making and selling nure-senbei, a type of rice cracker moistened with soy sauce, in a desperate attempt to keep afloat.

This offshoot unexpectedly turned out to be a commercial hit. After getting off the train, passengers open the station-house doors to enter the waiting room, where the smell of soy sauce hangs in the air.

The aroma wafts from wet rice crackers grilled on a charcoal brazier.

"We didn't expect much initially," recalled Takeshi Obara, 43, general affairs department chief at Choden.

Obara said he and his colleagues thought they could only make 500 crackers every day.

Shortly after, however, demand for the rice crackers exploded. The station became flooded with orders from department stores and retailers, mainly from outside the prefecture.

"We had off-duty train engineers and maintenance men help us make the rice crackers in a prefab hut behind the station," Obara reminisced. "We kept on making rice crackers early in the morning and late at night."

Now the company runs a factory solely to make rice crackers.

The factory produces 15,000 rice crackers every day, generating annual sales of 240 million yen, twice as much as revenues from train fares.

The crackers pushed Choden back into the black last year, and may have ensured its survival, to the relief of local people.

"The rattle of the train is the sound of our land. I can't see it go," said Kingo Nagasawa, 76, a historian born and raised in the city.